Start your property search

3 Tips About When to Start Your Home Purchase

Are you thinking about buying a home? Its an exciting and often overwhelming process for many people, especially first-time home buyers or even for seniors who have been in their homes for many years. Perhaps in both cases the impending change is extremely daunting and stressful. Here are some tips you may find helpful and that will hopefully reduce your anxiety.

The internet has made your search easier than ever before. However, the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming. Therefore, we suggest you consider the following factors first:

1. When Do You Want to Move?

If you don’t expect to purchase your new home for a few months or years yet, be kind to yourself. There’s no point in getting excited about homes that are currently for sale. Within a couple of months, they will have either sold or they will be taken off the market. By all means take this time to review homes on your favorite website or drive around neighbourhoods, but don’t expect most REALTORS® to tour you around looking at homes you are not ready to buy.

2. Consider Your Wants & Needs

You should also think long and hard about what kind of home you need rather than focusing on what’s for sale. For example: would a condo or single-family home be best for you? How many bedrooms do you actually need? How big does your home need to be? What about cost? How much can you actually afford? Be careful about purchasing more home than you need. In the end it will be you that has to: pay for it, clean it and maintain it. Why not draw up a list of “must haves” “and “would like to haves”?

3. How Long Will Your Purchase Process Take?

Before the internet most buyers would find a REALTOR® that they liked and trusted who had access to an “MLS book”. They would then go with the REALTOR® who would drive them around perhaps 20 to 30 homes before they had seen enough homes to want to purchase one.

Here is how the modern buyer typically shops. Most buyers shop passively for 2 to 3 years looking online and just dreaming about making a home purchase. Then most buyers will spend 2 to 3 months looking around online and driving around neighbourhoods to get a sense as to where they really would like to live and in what kind of home. After that, most home buyers will choose a REALTOR® and go out to tour homes. Most modern home buyers will look at ONLY 5 to 10 homes and buy one.